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It’s fall in Oakhurst when a new visitor comes to town.
The leaves are a beautiful patchwork of gold and crimson and Pearl is asleep outside in a pile of leaves, still resting from the full moon the night before. Cleo is sitting on their house’s porch, crocheting as she watches her wife sleep. The air is crisp and chill against her skin, but it’s not like she’s any warmer.
She looks up when she hears the distant flapping of two pairs of bat wings. There are plenty of bats in the caves around Oakhurst, but it’s far too early for any real bats to be out. She stands, looking up. Drift, Shelby, and Scott left a few weeks ago, but maybe two of them came back because they’d forgotten something.
The first bat lands on a sturdy branch of an apple tree, the opposite side of the yard from where Pearl is asleep. Cleo blinks. That bat is unfamiliar— small, pale, with pinkish wings. Their first thought is someone from their mother’s coven, someone come for them, come to make them pay for what they did all those years ago, and she takes a step back, crouching and preparing to run for Pearl, about to scream to wake her, when the second bat flutters down next to the first and Cleo does recognize that one, a larger, darker bat, though it’s been several decades.
It’s someone she thought she’d never see again.
“…Apo?” Cleo asks, more than a bit taken aback as the other vampire transforms back into her human form. The other bat transforms too, into a young woman with coppery hair in a dress that mirrors Apo’s, just in white and pink instead of black and red. She wraps her arms around Apo, and Cleo can’t tell if it’s out of a fear of falling or just a show of affection. Slightly possessive.
“Don’t sound so excited to see me or anything,” Apo snarks, and that’s more or less what Cleo expected. Cleo inhales, then exhales. Neither of the vampires are holding stakes or anything, and Apo doesn’t seem particularly angry, even with the snark. Cleo stays standing, but she relaxes her stance. “I’m just here to visit Martyn and Ren. I didn’t expect to see you two up in the daytime, let alone…”
Apo tilts her head towards Pearl, who yawns, stirring at the noise.
“Cleo, what’s going on?” Pearl asks.
“We’ve got guests, apparently,” Cleo says. “Apokuna and…?”
“CherriFire,” the other vampire replies, raising her hand to show a wedding ring. “I’ve heard all sorts of things about you, Cleo.”
“Ah,” Cleo says, putting the pieces together. She looks away for a moment, the memories of those months flashing before her mind. She’s talked them over with Pearl a thousand times, and the memories of Apo in particular haven’t gotten easier to deal with. They’ve told themself all sorts of things, all sorts of justifications for why they’d acted the way they did. Apo had been reckless, had been a loose canon. But — well. She’d been one too. “Nothing but praise, I’m sure.”
“And me too, right?” Pearl asks, play offended.
“Some about you too, yeah,” Cherri says, tilting her head. “Not the bit about you being a werewolf. Also didn’t mention how ripped you were. Damn, girl.”
“Cherri,” Apo hisses, so quiet that anyone without vampiric hearing wouldn’t be able to make it out, so of course everyone does. Somehow, despite the lack of blood flow, their face manages to turn bright red. They elbow Cherri. Pearl doesn’t even look flustered for a second, she just sits up, knocking off the hand crocheted blanket Cleo had draped over her sleeping body and revealing her bare chest.
“Sorry,” Cherri says to her wife, not remotely sorry sounding as she looks appreciatively. Pearl gives her a wide grin.
“You turned her?” Cleo asks Apo.
“Oh, I insisted,” Cherri laughs. “I’m not letting my girl see eternity without me. She’s not getting away that easy.”
“Sorry if it doesn’t exactly follow your precious code.” Apo says, with a bite. Cleo bristles, but Pearl shoots them a look, and they relax. Deserved, probably.
“That— it depends on a few things, but,” Cleo sighs. “It doesn’t matter. I follow a different code now.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” Cherri asks, before putting her hands on the branch and scooting both her and Apo off it. Apo’s eyes go wide for a moment, clearly not expecting the sudden descent, but they land gracefully. Cleo puts her crocheting down before looking around for the flask she knows she’d brought out with her.
She finds it, then offers it to her two visitors. “First, do no harm.”
“I see,” Apo says, staring at Cleo for a few moments. Cherri is the one to take the flask first, taking a nice long sip. “You look comfortable here.”
“It’s a lot better now we’ve taken care of the curse,” Cleo says.
“That was real?” Apo asks.
“Yep. There’s a whole lot of interesting stuff here, if you know where to look. I can show you inside, if you want to come in?”
“I’m good,” Apo says, taking the flask from Cherri and sipping politely before offering it back. “Thanks for the blood.”
“It’s the least I can do. I really didn’t expect to see you back here.”
“Like I said,” Apo shrugs. “Martyn and Ren. And Cherri wanted to see the place.”
“As far as places to get brutally murdered go, there’s worse ones,” Cherri offers. “You’ve done a good job in rebuilding. I expected a smoldering ash pile from the way Apo described what Abolish did to the place.”
“Time heals a lot of things,” Cleo says, looking at Apo’s face and trying to decipher the emotion on it. It’s been three decades, but the expression on her face makes Cleo think it’s been centuries. Their time in Oakhurst aged them, badly, and they hadn’t exactly come into the town unscathed. Cleo read about what happened in Fernfeld when they’d gone looking for her. “I wanted to write, but I didn’t know where you were.”
“That’s fine,” Apo replies, her hand tight in Cherri’s. “I didn’t want to be found.”
“Still— you deserve an—“ Cleo glances to Pearl, who gives them a look that’s equal parts firm and reassuring. Cleo’s heart is long since still, but it’s stuck in their throat anyway. “An apology. From me.”
Apo gives them a hard look, studying their face just like they study hers. Searching for something, maybe a sign of insincerity. Cleo isn’t the best at showing emotion, not even after all these years, but she does her best approximation of remorse.
“Why?” Apo asks, after a few seconds had passed. “Why did you do it?”
Cleo laughs awkwardly, forcing herself not to look away. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that, Apo. I did a lot of bad stuff.”
Cherri’s expression grows more serious as Apo’s hand finds hers, holding tightly.
“All of it, I guess?” Apo says, on uneven footing. That makes two of them. “What did I ever do to you, to make you hate me so much?”
Cleo tries to find a better answer. Searches, long and hard. But there isn’t one.
“Nothing,” she admits, arching her back and cracking her spine. “You didn’t do anything. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Then— why?”
“You reminded me of me.” Apo stares at them, their red eyes piercing and uncomprehending at the same time. “Scared. Trying to cling desperately to the last shreds of strength you had. Except… you were better at all of this than I was. Even with your little slip with the rain, you were so much better at this than I was.”
“You’re kidding me.” Apo’s voice is as flat as it always is. “Me?”
“Apo, you survived seven of us coming after you,” Cleo says, raising an eyebrow. “Repeatedly. Without you keeping Scott busy, I don’t know if the town would’ve been able to last long enough for Pearl to get her plan together. You and Abolish are the reason as many people made it out of there as did.”
“I turned Sausage. I killed Martyn,” Apo looks away. “And I might as well have killed Ren.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Pearl says, as cheery as ever. Apo spins her head to face Pearl, suspicious, only a little bit flustered to see Pearl topless. Cleo smiles as her eyes fall on her wife, the small, genuine smile that she never would’ve thought herself capable of before she met Pearl. “If it weren’t for you dragging Martyn out of the river, he would’ve died before. And let’s be real, Ren wasn’t going to let himself be turned even for the sake of getting out of there. He would’ve chickened out and it would’ve ruined everything. Not to even begin on Sausage— he literally asked for it!”
Apo shakes their head slightly, but they don’t say anything.
“Come on,” Pearl says. “You can’t just pop in like that, come inside and have a sit down. You’ve gotta see Oscar.”
“The cat?” Apo asks, raising an eyebrow. “It’s been decades.”
“Yeah, well, he was dead when we met him, somehow, I don’t think he really gives much of a crap about aging,” Pearl says with her lazy grin. She gets up, completely forgetting she’s naked, and Apo manages to turn even redder. They drop Cherri’s hand to block their face, and Cherri wraps her wife in a hug. Apo looks shorter now, and Cleo notes they’re not wearing the big combat boots. Cherri is a good couple of inches taller than her wife, taller than even Cleo.
“You’re embarrassing our guests, dearest,” Cleo says, gently.
“Gimme a second,” Pearl gripes, but she grabs the blanket and covers herself. “Is that better?”
”Thank you,” Apo says, peaking out between her fingers.
“Gimme a second to get changed and then I’ll butcher us some proper…” Pearl looks up trying to gauge the progress of the sun towards the horizon. It’s still morning, so she guesses, “Dinner?”
Apo shrugs. “You really don’t have to.”
“Noooo, I’m going to,” Pearl says. “I’ve missed you, and I’m not letting you get away until you’ve introduced the misses properly, got it?”
“Better not to resist,” Cleo adds. “I’ve learned the hard way that when Pearl wants something, she gets it.”
“I want to meet the ghost cat,” Cherri chimes in. “And some cow would be nice. We’ve been subsisting off of mostly squirrels on the way here.”
“Alright…” Apo says. She smiles adoringly at the love she’d done so much to get back to, an expression Cleo’s not sure they’ve ever seen on her. “Anything for you, love.”
Cherri gives her a quick kiss on the forehead, and Pearl passes by Cleo as she heads into the house, the blanket only covering her front. Cleo had mostly been asking out of courtesy, she’d expected Apo to turn it down, and she’d honestly hoped for that outcome. Looking at Apo is only bringing back memories of the monster they’d been. But that monster had been a coward, much more so than Apo’s monster ever was.
If they’re willing to be in the same room as Cleo, then Cleo owes it to them to be just as strong. They step aside to let Apo into their home, some part of them almost daring to hope that this wrong is one they can, if not undo, then at least begin to make up for.